The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1887-12-04
YOUNG UTAH SHOULD REFLECT.

any OLDSE pdIL VI bIO SONAIAyi oAO
called upon to reflect. The political
questions arising between the various
parties Of the nation become fiat and
unimpor+ant, compared with the vital
controversies of local politics. Free
trade and protection, State rights and
centraiz3tion, prohibition, high license
and free rum, are of considerable i'm
portance, one way and another, but pale
into relative insignihcance compared
with The contest here in Utah. between
despotisuI aid iioerty.
The acrimonies of the situation com
pei young men to range themselves on
one side or the other of the controversy,
and it is cur desire that they should not
mistake the side upon which they
belong, by every rule Of right and JUS
tice.
1t is a foregone conclusion that those
SONS Of Mormon parents who them
selves remain MormOns, will become
enthusiastic members of the Peoples
Party. Ali you say, there is the old,
state among the Mormons. Not 80; it
is nothing more or less than political
union of Mormons to defeat poiitical
onslaught upon Morleons. A political
fght against Mormons calls for a poll
teal union of Mormons. If the
ballot box IS used &c jeopardize our
civil rights, we must be pardoned
if we use the ballot box in an endeavol
TO re ain them. If Mormonism and the
PEOPLES party are coextensiVe; If Nor
mons are politicians and seem to grasp
for political control; if leading Mormon
ecclesiastics are leaders in politics, it is
not because Of desire, but because OF
necessity; it is not because the Mormons
seek it. bat because their opponents
drive them to it. The Mormons, having
the franchise, in a measure, have too
much worldly sagacity, too much OF the
instinct of self-preservatiOn, to sit idly
down, while lot of charactec.ess al
venturers and scheming carpet beggeEs
commit highway robbery on their
liberties and property.
Those young men who depart from
the belief of their Mormon parents,
though they have not the instinct of
religious persecution, the experience of
having their rights violently assailed,
have yet the sufficient motive of love
for the right, a sense of justice, that
should render them forever the enemies
of the unholy and unrepublican warfare
waged against the liberties of their
fathers.
Review the situation. It's most strik-
ing feature is that the Liberals, the anti
Mormons, are offensive, and the Nor
mons, .defensiYs. One seeks to take
away, the other to retain. The Liberal
party has disfranchised polygamists by
test oath, has by an utterly irdefensible
stroke Of legislation disfrancbised
all of the women of the Territory
has secured outrageous jury
laws, applauds the tyrannies of
a Territorial form of govern ment and
seeks for the more unrepubiicsn role by
appointed commission, sustains the
most erroneous decisions of missionary
Judges, combats the movement for
Statehood, secures the coRfiscation of
church property, and by a system of
perpetual libels forces an ignorant
public TO believe everything heinous of
a deserving people. While on the part
of the Latter-day Saints there is an
effort, proper and legitimate endeavor
to retain the franchise and to enjoy as
much Constitutional liberty as they are
entitled to. They have never en-
deavored to rob an opponent of one
privilege; they have never enacted laws
that drew invidious distinctions between
classes. They are honest, virtuous,
sober, industrious, charitable, and on
the right side of every question Of
public Importance. They had a full
right, under our system Of government,
to practice plural marriage. 1t has
never been shown, no serious effort has
ever been made to show that poIygamy,
as pTscticsd by the Latter-day Saints,
inteTfsTed with the rights of others in
any way, or was, in any manner, in
furious TO society. 1t is, or should be,
the virtue of our government that indi-
vidual liberty should never be curtailed
unless such injury may be clearly de-
nonstr8ted.
But, assuming that the Mormons
have fault, and that is Folygamy, can
the youth who take this view ayplaud
the extreme and unwise methods of
the Liberals to eradicate it2 If it ,is
wrong, will it not perish through con-
tact with the civilization of the day?
Or if the moral sentiment of the sge is
not its fttest opponent, as Henry Ward
Beecher and many other philosophers
have thought, win it not be more hu-
name, more logical, to treat it with
mildly repressiVe measures?